


Mismeasure

by Leidolette



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade knows the difference between Dave and Davesprite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mismeasure

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to [noobivore](http://noobivore.tumblr.com/) for agreeing to beta read!

Jade and Davesprite lay there in the dark, on the couch, stretched out on their sides. The two are the only ones in the room, maybe the only ones in this whole wing of the ship. The hour is late and the lights are dimmed to mimic deep twilight. Everything is dark except for the Lands, which hang suspended in the air, each luminescent and beautiful. Jade twitches her finger and all four of them begin to move.

Davesprite has taken the role of big spoon -- the wings on his back allow for little else. He reaches over and intertwines his fingers with Jade's. She looks down at his hand over hers and sleepily stares at the beautiful orange color of his skin. It's so bright that it seems like he should taste like candy or citrus, but she's licked him enough times (and kissed him, and maybe even bit him a little) to know that he tastes completely normal.

Jade's eyelids start to droop as she watches the gently glowing planets twirl slowly around the ceiling. Davesprite's voice washes over her in waves as he rambles in her general direction. It's nice, relaxing. He reaches out to give her ears a nice scritch every now and then and that's pretty nice too. A couple months ago, Davesprite had told her that he used to ask Bro for a dog when he was younger, she thinks it's funny how it all turned out. It's an old thought, but she lets out a sleepy little giggle anyways.

"And what are you chuckling about over there, Jade?" Dave says, rousing her.

"Oh, just the dog thing again," she says with a little more wakefulness.

"Yeah, dog related humor is basically the height of comedy. I better not tell the one about the St. Bernard and the poodle, you'll piddle the rug for sure."

"Gross!"

"Yeah, well, I didn't make up the dog rules."

"What is up with you and pee, anyways?" she says, lazily twisting around to see his face better. He's got the color of persimmon rising high in his cheeks, and she know that's his version of a blush.

"I could tell you, or we could talk about _literally anything else_."

"We could talk about how badly I beat you in Ghostbusters today," Jade says, giving him a kiss on the chin.

"Nope, _you_ didn't beat me in Ghostbusters, a horrible fox-faced anime monster beat me in Ghostbusters and then yiffed my corpse after I died. I refuse to believe that my beautiful, trustworthy girlfriend could be responsible for that."

The words were a joke, but they make Jade's heart beat faster anyways. She leans in close and warm. "Davesprite," she whispers in his ear, "it was me. It was totally me."

She can feel a soft intake of breath, but Dave just makes a face and says "Ugh."

"Yep, I totally kicked your butt," she says.

"Oh, are we trash talking now? Really? Because I'll take you out, just call me the Ghostgarbageman."

"The Ghostgarbageman?"

"Yeah, when I win I'll be taking you to the curb."

"Ghostgarbageman does not really roll off the tongue."

"Okay, we've officially spent way too long talking about one of the shittiest games in existence."

"You're the one who wanted a change of subject, _Ghostgarbageman_ ," she teases.

"And now I'm changing it again," Davesprite says, his voice soft. His face tilts forward and he kisses her on the cheek. The neck.

The lips.

 

\----

 

Jade lies there in the dark, on the bed, stretched out on her back. She is the only one in the room. It is very late, and the lights are dim. But then, the lights are always dim here on the meteor. Rose and Dave have been living here for three years, she reminds herself, then gets a little sad at the thought. The darkness is already bothering her, and she's only been here for two days. 

Jade rubs her eyes. She misses her island. She misses the smell of dirt and the sea and freshly broken leaves. She tries not to think of what else (who else) she misses.

She rolls over onto her side. Maybe she can't blame everything on the constant twilight. Jade has felt out of sorts since, well, the **BARK**. It's like she's disconnected and tired, though sleep is eluding her tonight, no matter how tired she is.

She sighs and kicks off the blankets. Well, fuck this! If she has to be awake then she is going to do something else besides stare at the ceiling. She throws on her clothes and walks out the door.

What she ends up doing is staring at the dead things floating in roiling vats, racing nothing down the sparsely lit corridors, and howling at the empty patch of space where a moon should be. Things that get her heart beating and make her feel ferocious instead of sad.

Ferocious and _hungry_. Guess it's time for a midnight snack.

Jade makes her way through the twisting, dark corridors, which maybe don't seem so dark now that her eyes have a reflective sheen behind them. She turns into the kitchen and stops, there he is: Dave Strider. Human, and without a speck of orange on him.

"Hey there!" She's surprised to see him. It's pretty late in the cycle the meteor crew has been using as a day, she'd been expecting to find no one, maybe a troll at most.

"Hey," Dave says back. He's reaching up into a high cabinet and feeling around for something. The motion makes the hem of his shirt pull up and Jade can see the line of his hip bone.

"What are you looking for?" she says, looking back up. As soon as she says it he's already bringing something down from the top shelf.

Which he immediately drops.

A large, mottled bug hits the floor and scurries off before either of them can react. It's round, with a domed top and flat bottom. It's about the size and shape of a hamburger, if a hamburger had antenna and about a dozen pairs of legs.

Jade watches as the thing flees down the corridor leading away from the kitchen. "Ugh! What was that?" she says. She's not usually bothered by bugs, but something about the way it moves kind of grosses her out.

"You really, _really_ don't want to know what weird shit trolls will guzzle if they get half a chance." He's rubbing his hand back and forth over his thigh, like the material of his pajama pants will erase the memory of alien bug legs squirming in his palm.

"So... what were you _actually_ looking for?"

"Some food I made with the alchemizer. That thing is pretty great, you can get some _ridiculous_ flavors." He stands on the balls of his feet and reaches back into the cabinet. After about five seconds of Dave blindly feeling around, Jade gets bored and zaps the entire contents of the top shelf onto the table next to them in a crackle of green energy. Two more of the hamburger-bugs scurry away but there's his knockoff bag of 'Cheatos', clear as day.

"Whoa there, Lassie. I know you want to retrieve things, but warn a guy next time," Dave says as he shoos the bugs out of the room.

"Sorry!" Jade says, though she gives him a smile, "I like using my powers."

"Yeah, well you got a pretty cool one. I'm burnt out on mine, I haven't made a single physicist cry with my Timetables in years," he says as they both take a seat at the table.

"As an amateur physicist myself, I am very appreciative!" Jade opens the bag of Cheatos and takes a bite. Hmm, not bad.

"No prob, the only profession I try to make cry are other webcomic authors, and they deserve that for being my competition."

"Aw, Dave, you should go easy on them. Not everyone can draw a pork chop mouth the way you can." Jade gives him teasing poke in the side.

Wow, did it feel great talking to Dave again. After Davesprite had broken up with her, things had been depressingly awkward between them. Neither of them were mean or mad, but compared to her previous easy friendship with Dave and the sweet beginning of her relationship with Davesprite, Jade had found the whole situation exhausting.

Dave's voice draws her attention back to the conversation. "Thanks, it did take a lot of practice to perfect. You should see them now, I had nothing to goddamn do but draw. Those pork chops are so good your mouth will be watering when you see them. You'll be all 'Dave, did you have a barbecue while I was gone?', Nope just me cooking up some genius on Paint, is all."

Jade laughs, and Dave looks surprised and smiles a little. Maybe she wasn't the only one who forgot what the other was like.

"That bored, huh?" she says after a moment.

"No good books, no good movies, no good video games. Hell, they wouldn't even have needed to be good video games. At this point I'd even take Mad Snacks Yo."

The title sparks a memory. Not too long after the beginning of their voyage, Jade and Davesprite had traveled down to the Land of Heat and Clockwork. Davesprite had some stuff he wanted to loot from his room, so they ended up hanging out in his apartment for most of the day. It had been nice for the most part. He'd played some jams for her and they'd played though his collection of video games. But she remembered the way his face had looked when he'd picked up one of his bro's hats that had fallen to the floor...

Jade shakes off the memory. "Even Mad Snacks Yo? But it's so bad!"

Dave's lips part slightly. "You've played Mad Snacks Yo? I thought you didn't really give a shit about video games?"

"Hey, we got bored on the ship too! Besides, anything was better than another session of that Ghostbuster game."

"Ghostbusters game?"

"Yeah, John found this old Ghostbusters II MMORPG in his room and got us all hooked on it."

Dave leaned back in his seat. "God damn. That's amazing, even for John. I can't believe I missed that. That game must have been a true masterpiece, like Bill Murray's smirking face carved into a mountain of horseshit." Dave trailed off, thankfully.

"It was pretty shitty! But we played it so much I ended up getting sort of good it at by the end. I could never beat your score in Mad Snacks Yo, though."

"Jade, I'm sorry to have to tell you this," he reaches his hand across the table and nudges her pinky with his, "but it's because you just don't have enough 'tude to school your wicked hunger with piles of corn syrup and cool ranch. When you've guzzled as much Mountain Dew Baja Blast as I have you learn how the world works."

Jade good-naturedly rolls her eyes. "Oh geez, of course. How could I even have hoped to beat your score, _Ghostgarbageman_." She gives him a smile.

Which turns into something closer to a grimace when she realizes what she's said.She squeezes her eyes shut, and for a second Dave and Davesprite meld together wildly in her mind; feathers and legs, wings and red. Her heart beats very fast.

Her eyes open and she looks at the boy across the table and he's the Dave that sent her selfies taken in a bathroom mirror, not the Dave who'd wrapped his wings around her and let her pretend to be an owl if she wanted. She knows Dave and Davesprite are different people, she _knows_. It's just that with her eyes closed and Dave joking with her and nudging her hands it is so easy to forget.

"Wait, what?" he says, his smile is still hanging on but he's beginning to look confused. "Who's Ghostgarbageman?"

She realizes suddenly that she knows what Dave had nightmares about in fifth grade, what his hair smells like, where he likes to be touched. Dave and Davesprite are different, but they are not _that_ different. She looks at the Dave in front of her and feels like a creep, like an intruder that he doesn't even know is there. 

She does not want to be in this room anymore.

"Nothing. I just - " She pauses and takes a breath. "I just got mixed up for a second."

Jade pulls her arms off the table and stands up. Dave follows the motion with his eyes and wears the bewildered expression of someone who has just tripped over an invisible object.

"I'm _really_ tired," she says as conversationally as she can. "So, goodnight. I'll see you tomorrow, Dave." She stresses the _Dave_ part to herself very hard inside her head.

"Uh, 'night," he says and she feels guilty about the strain of weirdness in his voice. His hand lifts slightly off the table as if...

The exit is just a step to her left, and she takes it.


End file.
